AIBU - neighbour moving rubbish bags to my front door

[PregnantAnnoyed]

Dear MN - I need you help. Am I being hormonal and unreasonable (I’m heavily pregnant), or am I right to feel really pissed off. In the case of the latter - what should I do next?

I live in central London. Our street is all terraced houses, divided into flats with a few businesses at ground level - little restaurants, a chippie, a pub across the road, a corner shop at the end of the street. A lot of people pass by on a daily basis.

Domestic rubbish collection is officially once a week on a Friday morning and everyone is supposed to just leave their bin bags out by the nearest lamppost for collection. That said, rubbish trucks (for commercial waste I guess) do come most other mornings as well and pick up whatever’s out.

It’s not ideal but would work OK if residents just left their bin bags out the night before rubbish collection days. This doesn’t always happen and things get gross when bags are left out at random times of day and on the few days when no rubbish collection happens. Crows and foxes rip the bags open and rubbish goes everywhere. It also seems to encourage people passing by to just drop their loose rubbish in piles by the lampposts. The pavement is narrow and the whole street quickly starts to look like a landfill site, with loose domestic waste all the way up to people’s front doors.

So this am, I was leaving home when I saw a man from a few doors down move a gross, ripped bag of waste with wet wipes and kitchen scraps and crap literally falling out of it, from the lamppost outside his door to the (hitherto completely clear) lamppost outside of our front door. It was so unusual that it hadn’t really registered what he’d done until he was walking away. I just stood and stared at him in disbelief and, when he clocked this, he just stood in place and stared back. It was like some sort of passive aggressive stare-off.

I just stood and scrolled on my phone and he left eventually, which is when I moved the gross bin bag back to where it was, where it’s still sitting now (until collection tomorrow am)

AIBU?

Yes - how dare he move a waste problem from his front door to someone else’s
No - he can hand-move rubbish from outside his door to wherever he wants if he is that concerned about it

If I’m NBU, what should I do next?

To pre-empt a few questions:

• I don’t know who he is and while I know his house number, I don’t know which of the 4 flats is his
• I’d like him to stop. Rubbish attracts more rubbish and I don’t want the whole street and everyone passing by to dump waste by our front door
• though I don’t have proof, this may have been going on for a while as there’s been a bigger than usual pile of rubbish by our front door lately
• the man was middle aged and middle class, so probably not the kind to retaliate with violence, intimidation etc but could still be an entitled arse and not back down if challenged
• I don’t particularly want a confrontation or to make enemies out of neighbours

Help MN!

Diagram here. Blue stars represent the offending bin bag.

Oops voting should be the other way round! So:

AIBU?

No - how dare he move a waste problem from his front door to someone else’s
Yes - he can hand-move rubbish from outside his door to wherever he wants if he is that concerned about it

I’d be writing to the council asking why you don’t have some kind of vermin proof receptacles for rubbish and explaining what’s happening about people leaving bags out when we they want and asking what they plan to do about the situation.

If they don’t sort it you’ll get rats. You don’t want them. They can get into houses. And will choose nesting areas near a food source so all of the properties in the area are at risk.

It was rude of him, he knew exactly what he was doing and I'd have moved it back too (while muttering all the things I wished I'd shouted)

It’s not an ideal system but it’s very common in London, @Elieza. We already have plenty of rats and mice as well as seagulls and god knows what else going for the bins, which is why it’s best to leave them out the night before or, better still - on the morning (but that would be before 7am). Most permanent residents are quite good, but the annual influx of students and graduates around this time of year sets things back a bit until they get the hang of it too, through leaflets from the council, posters, neighbours having words etc. This looks like a permanent resident though (like me), so I agree with @Dutch1e - he knew exactly what he was doing!

Do nothing.

You’ve stared at him & moved it back - I doubt he’s going to get into a full scale neighbour bin bag war. He was too proud to move it when you were watching but I reckon he won’t do it again.

The wheelie bin is your friend. Get campaigning!

I’d hope so @NoSquirrels, but he was staring me down quite (passive) aggressively this am!

Wheelie bins are never going to happen here, as there is literally nowhere for them to go, so we have to live with the system as it is. It doesn’t have to be grim if people just follow some basic rules!

Is there space for big communal bins at the end of the street or in the street (using up a parking slot but hey-ho). That’s what’s we’ve got in our London street and always had in Brighton.

Also he’s a dick. Piss on his lamppost.

I'm a delivery driver and I'm always getting out my car to move people's rubbish a few feet.

It amazing how many people put out rubbish and don't realise they are blocking street signs etc.

Loads of people live in terrace streets and have wheelie bins.
Long term you need to complain to the council.
If you have a full bin bag before bin day, where do you put it?

In our borough if you don’t have a scrap of front yard for your own bins then you’re only allowed to put your rubbish out on the morning of your weekly collection. To do it the night before would be risking a fine. I would speak to your council tbh as I’m aware London is a bit gross at times but that sounds particularly disgusting and hopefully they’ll come down on the people not waiting until bin day because it is kind of a health hazard. But no YANBU to not want some random’s rubbish dumped outside your front door. Hopefully he won’t do it again now that you’ve moved it back.

You posted a diagram so I'd already be on your side!

He shouldn't have kicked it away from his property. Get on to your local council to see if they have any options- they might be able to sort a dumpster type bin for everyone to chuck their rubbish.

Put your bags where his should go then it's a straight swap

Under the Environmental Protection Act householders have to present their waste a certain way, according to the Local Authority's instructions.

Here, it's no earlier than the evening before and it must be on the curtledge of the property, not in the street. It is different for properties like yours, where it has to be in sacks, but similar rules apply.

Basically your LA should be enforcing the rules. So I'd be calling them, explaining the situation and asking them to do something about it.

No space there either @burritofan, but there are big council bins for recycling at one end of the street. Between those, the almost daily morning collections, council litter pickers and a very responsive app for reporting fly-tipping and littering, the street can be kept reasonably clean most of the time.

The issue I have though is not with the system, but the fact that when it failed next to this man’s house (likely due to one of his neighbours), he moved the filth to my doorstep!

My neighbours and I are quite good at keeping “our” section of the pavement clean, by working with the system ourselves and making sure any new neighbours know about it too. If we do get filth, we report it / speak to the person (if we know who it is) / leave a note on the lamppost. We don’t just move it down the road to someone else’s door…

@IveGotASongThatllGetOnYNerves

Put your bags where his should go then it's a straight swap

I may start doing this, but my rubbish goes out the morning of collection when I’m leaving for work, just before the lorry comes, so he’s unlikely to even see it! It’s other people’s rubbish being left out all hours and getting ripped up by birds and animals that’s the problem - a problem that his house has, which he’s decided to move to outside my house…

The system is the problem if it allows and even courages littering. People want their waste out of their homes, and whilst dumping it outside isn't ideal, the system clearly isn't working for them. It's like saying we don't need litter bins if everyone takes their rubbish home. We have litter bins because not everyone will take their rubbish home.

Also yanbu: someone created a problem for him. He was unreasonable and selfish to pass that problem onto you.

@EastWestWhosBest

Loads of people live in terrace streets and have wheelie bins. Long term you need to complain to the council. If you have a full bin bag before bin day, where do you put it?

Not in Central London because many of the buildings open directly on to the street and don't have any private outside space at the property. Even if they do have outside space, it is usually entirely enclosed at the back of the property.

If you have a full bin bag before bin day, where do you put it?

You have to keep it inside your home. It's a big problem in London, many old converted properties have no rubbish storage areas at all. If you took a street of 4 storey converted Victorian terraced townhouses with commercial properties below and gave every flat and shop a wheelie bin, there wouldn't be enough room on the pavement for the bins, let alone people.

Doesn't your borough have a clean pavement policy where you can't put your rubbish out more than 30 mins before your rubbish collection slot? They are pretty hot at ripping apart bin bags to find and fine the culprit here. Some boroughs have communal rubbish bins on the streets, others have have more frequent collection to combat the issue of inadequate rubbish storage, it's twice a day here. You need to lobby the council for a solution as it is a health hazard.

Thanks everyone who’s described the waste collection issues for central London living - that’s exactly what we have. Our council does have policies around this - rubbish left outside of collection days / times is classed as fly-tipping and is punishable by a fine. The problem is - there is zero enforcement. Many people have complained and in fact there is an active residents’ association with an blog dedicated to rubbish issues in the neighbourhood. They have been on the council’s arse about this for years, getting environmental health involved, bending the ears of councillors etc etc. Those efforts haven’t achieved any big changes though. Honestly, all that would warrant a dedicated thread!

So, while efforts with the council are getting nowhere fast, assuming that the system is going to stay as it is for now, what should I do about this neighbour’s actions?

So, while efforts with the council are getting nowhere fast, assuming that the system is going to stay as it is for now, what should I do about this neighbour’s actions?

Dump it on your local councillor's desk?

I don't know what you can do really, other than move it yourself so the rubbish passes along the street in a giant stinky game of pass the parcel. Why should he put up with someone else's trash dumped outside his front door any more than you should have to put up with him dumping it in front of your house? Enlist him as an ally in lobbying the council? Call the council every time there is a fly tipped bag until they give in?

Unless you want to risk Hep B, E.Coli or some other nasty and rifle through the bag in your rubber gloves to identify the culprit?

The thing is @chesirecat99 his solution for dealing with the problem was to move it down the road (to my house). That’s not something I or my neighbours do when we get rubbish problems on our doorstep - we report it via the dedicated council app, we speak to new neighbours in case it was one of them, we take part in the neighbourhood efforts (including getting on the council’s arse). If it’s really bad, we clean it up ourselves. None of us would dream of dumping it down the street and walking away… I think his actions were shitty and I don’t want him to keep doing this.

I’m weirdly shocked by your refuse collection system- I’m not doubting you at all, but I lived in central London for 20 years in a couple of different boroughs and always had communal rubbish areas. I had no idea how lucky I was!!

Anyway, he’s obviously being unreasonable, and good on you for moving it back!

I think his actions were shitty and I don’t want him to keep doing this

Not as shitty as the person that left it in the first place though. I suppose it's possible that he saw one of your neighbours dump it outside his house...

I guess you could make a leaflet with the correct procedure for reporting fly tipping and refuse collection rules and times, and a request not to move fly tipped rubbish outside other people's homes, and post it through everyone's doors.

I'm eye rolling so much at the commentators on here who just don't understand how central London refuse works. I live and work in London and know exactly what your situation is. However most areas I know that work like this are very good and put their waste out the morning of collection - Kensington for example.

The only thing I can suggest is maybe posting reminders through letterboxes to ask people to put their waste out in a "just in time" manner?

If it continues then maybe report it via the "fix my street" app to the council as it could be effectively seen as fly tipping?

In the meantime I'd be petty and dump any moved bags by stare off guy back to his location. Or maybe you could combine forces to find out who the offender is if it's equally pissing you off?